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Fun Fact:
It's only an issue genetically if there is continual inbreeding. Marrying a cousin every now and then does little to affect future offspring, unless everyone in the family is marrying their cousins!

My mom had a cousin a few years older than her. He was really socially awkward and just a bit weird and off. She had not seen him in years and was getting ready for her wedding to my dad. The day before the wedding, the cousin shows up and confesses his love for her and asked her to marry him instead. He told her marrying my dad was a terrible mistake. My dad kicked him out and my mom has not seen him since. That was 36 years ago. They are still married and crazy about each other.

I heard that if his brother dies, he gets his wife. However, hearing it from one person doesn't make it acceptable for today's Islamic countries. It'd be nice to see a chart or some sort of study that compiles data on a variety of diverse cultures which socially accept incest

That's true. In middle-east people marry their cousins and think that is completely normal. It's scientifically proven it can cause defected babies, but believe it or not a huge amount of people don't know that. That means if religion allows them, they would do it cluelessly.

actually, OP wouldn't have been born since he used to be one of billions of sperm that were racing towards his mother's egg-- whereas it would be a different set of a few billion sperm racing towards the egg if it was her cousin instead.

Wow. That's awkward. My sympathies. My grandfather's nephew, who I'd never met before till I ran into him at my job, has started coming in once a week and saying uncomfortably awkward things to me. Telling me I smell so good it makes him want to jump over the counter, and, you know. Yesterday he told me he dreamt about me last night. He said this in front of his daughter, who is my age. Relatives be fucking creepy.

Same. My great grandparents were first cousins and a few of my aunties and uncles have webbed feet. It's the incest creeping but they just laugh it off or tell me to fuck off. We're Irish, apparently it happened alot.

It's going back to the Mitochondrial Eve theory, that we all can be traced back genetically to one specific female that was estimated to have lived approximately 200,000 years ago, most likely in East Africa.

There's also a newer alternative theory called Y-chromosomal Adam and it goes more or less that we can be traced backwards through our fathers to a male that lived approximately between 237,000 and 581,000 years ago, possible, but not guaranteed, in more or less the same area as Mitochondrial Eve.

ed: I think there's nothing to stop both of these theories both being true though.

Just to be clear, the theories would be when and where Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chomosomal Adam existed, not that they exist in the first place. There is no question that everyone alive on earth does have a most recent common matrilineal and patrilineal ancestor.

I botched it a bit I think, got the info from here but forgot one slight difference. It was that wild groups of chimps in Africa show a greater genetic diversity than humans on different continents, not all of humanity.

There was an article recently where they had thought our y-chromosomal Adam was about 200,000 years ago, until they found a guy who did not come from that line, and linked him to a tribe in Africa who's y chromosomal ancestor doesn't intersect with the rest of us unless you go back about 500,000 years.

It's time to play the Listener Limerick Challenge. If you win you might be able to convince Carl Kasell to leave his voice on your answering machine if you ever meet him and ask nicely. Are you ready, AmadeusMop? Here's your limerick...

A young man was asked on a date,
By his cousin who's also a mate.
Cracked a joke on reddit,
Got downvotes as credit,
That man was ________.